(car engine revving)
- It was the first car to successfully challenge the M3
and the C class.
It was the car that could translate
Audi's all wheel drive rally dominance into luxury sales.
It was powerful enough to bring Audi back
from the brink of bankruptcy
and just like Nolan it has endured for over 25 years.
This is everything you need to know to get up to speed
on one of my favoritest cars, the Audi S4.
(beeping) ch.
(upbeat music)
And now a quick word from our sponsors.
This episode of Up to Speed is brought to you
by Epic Games, that's right baby.
Fortnite, you already know what it is,
hit the link in the description below
and start playing for free.
Where we dropping boys?
So, in 1965 Volkswagen resurrected the Audi Badge
after a two decades long absence in the car market.
VW bought the company to use their factories
to assemble Beetles,
but Audi engineers had other plans.
Behind the scenes they were like,
guys Volkswagen wants us to build bugs,
but we don't vant to build the car of z people.
We're engineers,
we vant to engineer a better car.
I know, we vant to build a cool car
that is sleek and fast and not round and weird.
Then das is vas we will do.
Hans.
You promise?
Yes, I promise.
So as VW was prepping their plants for Beetle production,
Audi hire ups decided they'd rather ask for forgiveness
than permission.
(gasp)
And they started building the Audi
without Volkswagen's knowledge.
And you wanna guess what happened?
Uh, yes.
It paid off?
Yes!
Alright.
VW loved the car and approved it for production.
And how can you blame them?
It looked great and had almost three times
as much power as the Beetle.
By 1972, Audi had established a solid reputation
with a succession of Sedans like the Audi 72,
75, 80, and Super 90.
In 1984, the introduction of the all new Audi 5000
shot sales through the freakin roof.
The aerodynamic luxury car increased profits
for the company by 48% and Audi was on a roll.
Just like me on New Year's.
(chuckles)
But the optimism wouldn't last,
shortly after the 5000's debute.
Some owners started claiming that their cars
had taken off at full throttle,
while their foot was planted on the brake.
How could zis be?
What ze heck is going on?
Six deaths and seven hundred accidents later,
Audi was swimming in lawsuits
and the engineers didn't have any answers.
They couldn't find anything wrong with the car.
America news show 60 Minutes aired
a damning report on the 5000
which included testimony from Audi owners
who had experienced the "unintended acceleration"
for themselves and interviews with Audi execs.
Audi announced they would install brake shift
interlock devices in every 5000,
which kept drivers from shifting
without their foot on the brake.
60 minutes conducted a test to see if the new feature worked
and to Audi's complete surprise,
es funktioniert nicht.
But they got conned,
one of the "experts" conducting the tb test
had drilled a hole into the transmission
and connected a bottle of compressed air
that shifted the car from neutral into drive.
What?
What kind of crooked sorcery is this?
- The bad kind.
- The test was rigged,
but audiences didn't know that and the damage was done.
So what caused the acceleration?
People were stepping on the gas,
when they thought they were it was the brake.
What? (chuckling)
The 5000's brake pedal was smaller than people were used to.
- That's what she said.
Or he said.
- And it was a little closer to the gas pedal.
So great, it wasn't their fault.
They shouldn't have to pay anybody out, right?
Well they did anyway.
And to make matters worse,
BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus had all but destroyed
Audi by the early 90's.
The total number of Audi's sold in the US
dropped from 75,000 in 1984 to only 12,000 by 1991.
At which point, ba-lay-ger.
Who that works with me thinks I can say that word?
At which point beleaguered 5000 Sedan was retired.
Audi was down.
To stay afloat, the company needed a life raft.
A car that could reestablish their role as a leader
in luxury performance.
By 1991 a young American designer by the name of J Mays
had made his way from Maysville, Oklahoma
to Audi and he brought with him
a little thing called insight.
He was like,
"guys Americans are gonna want a car that looks like this."
And while he wasn't the only designer to work on the car,
his opinion mattered a lot because he was American.
And Audi needed Americans to like their cars.
Enter the Audi 100 C4.
Mays reminded everybody that in the 80's
Audi had found racing glory with their group B
dominating er quattro.
But the production model quattro coups
weren't big sellers.
Maybe if they tossed the same
kind of performance recipe together,
in a more practical Sedan body style,
people would buy more of their cars.
They were like,
"zis guy might be American,
but he wears glasses and zat means he's smart,
just like the Nike from America, let's do it."
In 1991, Audi unveiled a high performance version
of their venerable 100 C4 Sedan
calling it the S4.
It used the same 2.2 liter turbo inline five
they relied on since 1985,
only it's output was bumped way up to 227 horsepower,
in a Sedan.
That was unheard of in 1991.
The S4 came standard with Audi's famous
quattro all wheel drive
and it was one of the quickest Sedans
of it's time, going zero to 60,
in about 6 seconds.
That beat the rear wheel drive only M3
which was still just and inline four
making 192 horsepower.
(blowing raspberry)
Then, BMW was like,
"okay we gotta new M3 it's got a straight 6
and 282 horsepower."
And Audi was like, "phh let's make an S4 plus model
with a V8 and 278 horsepower."
Audi was challenging the ultimate driving machine,
for compact luxury Sedan supremacy which is not
a word I like to use when talking about German wars.
(gulps)
While still an underdog in the car market,
Audi started to find solid footing once again.
The second generation S4 made it's debut in 1997
with a modern new look
and a drastically different power plant.
A twin turbo 2.7 liter, 30 valve V6 engine
sent 262 horsepower to all four wheels
with a six speed manual.
And for the first time you could get
a five speed tiptronic automatic.
- Huh, that's lame.
- This all inspiring Audi, you might know by another name,
it's the B5 S4, the B5 S4 is by Audi fan boy standards
the ultimate S4.
It's power figures blew people away at the time.
Over 250 horses in a luxury Sedan.
Are you nuts?
All it took was a chiptune and boltons
to boost the power numbers out of the stratosphere.
Even cooler, was the B5 S4 Avant
a fricken Station Wagon.
In 2003, the third gen model S4 took no prisoners
and roared in the market with a smooth
but tough 4.2 liter, 40 valve V8
making a whopping 339 horsepower.
Critics praised the snarl of the engine
and the suspension that "seemingly
contradicts various laws of physics."
The S4 was securing it's place as a leader
among kick ass performance Sedans.
In 2005, Audi released it's fourth gen S4,
which was pretty much a light refresher on
the previous model.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Am I right?
Production of the fifth gen S4 began in 2008.
In a bold statement, Audi replaced the previous V8 engine
with a more compact and powerful 3 liter,
333 horsepower V6.
This was Audi's first modern super charged engine
and it put the S4 in direct competition with the
BMW 335 I.
The car reached sero to 60 in 4.4 seconds
and maintained the S4's trademark cornering capabilities.
The sixth and current gen S4 was officially introduced
at the 2015, Frankfurt Motor Show.
This single turbo, luxury performance model,
has been described as a 354 horsepower rocket sled!
(sled igniting)
It's sleek styling and smooth ride,
complete the perfect Audi picture
and continue to make the Audi S4 a formidable opponent
for other cars in it's class.
It is no exaggeration to say, that the S4 helped save
Audi from the brink.
With a modern focus on technical innovation,
safety, and plain old kick your butt off,
Smashmouth performance.
The S4 still puts fear into the hearts of
it's enemies and it's drivers.
It's understated, it's ferocious, it's the Audi S4.
Thank you to Epic Games and Fortnite
for sponsoring this episode of Up to Speed.
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even my mom has.
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Download Fortnite, for free,
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